Advances in technology have given interactive devices an increasing number of capabilities. This in turn has allowed a user of an interactive device to be able to make choices on how interacting with the device will proceed. For example, in the case of a toy, the more complex the toy's interaction with the user, the more complex and engaging the play becomes, thus expanding the number of opportunities for education, guidance and supervisory functions that the toy can provide. Traditionally, increasing complexity of the toy raises costs and increases fragility, which affects the mortality of the toy. Also, toys that are simple in construction and low in cost, are generally regarded as being incapable of complex interactions with the user of a toy.
Two approaches to increasing the capability of the toy have been used, both of which suffer from one or all of the preceding limitations. One relies upon adding computer capability into the toy. Interactive “Cabbage Patch” dolls are an example of such a toy. The “Furbee” is another example of such an approach. An alternate approach relies upon some external source of computing power to use the toy as a peripheral to the external computer. Such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,873,765 by Mattel, Incorporated, where phrases and responses are downloaded to the doll by computer command. Some toy systems such as “Lego Mindstorms” may use a combination of both. An approach such as this does not take advantage of the additional abilities that come from treating the toy as an equal element in a network of services, such that the toy is both simple in itself, yet is limited in capability only by the services on the widest net it has access to.
Work at MIT has focused on toys in this capacity. For example, the project known as Oxygen, as described in and article entitled “The Future of Computing” August 1999, Scientific American, used the interactive devices as an element in a network of other information appliances. An advantage from such an approach is that the interactive device is not completely dependent upon a single remote system, which would limit flexibility. The disadvantage of the toys used as proofs of concept in project Oxygen, were that they used expensive computer interface technology; such as a $10,000 motion tracking system. The Oxygen system utilizes a mobile identification capability that allows the toy to interact with a child based on that child's individual likes and dislikes and allows the environment to play a part in how the toy behaves with the particular child. Prior art toys are incapable of recognizing the individual users likes and dislikes and are unresponsive to unpreprogrammed changes in the environment.
The prior art also discloses toys which respond to external devices; such as a VCR disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,846,693, video game; such as, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,752,880, a remote control; such as in, U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,257 and additionally the Sony AIBO described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,870,527 all of which work on a constrained set of preprogrammed responses rather than responses that are downloaded into the device by the environment reacting to the user and device profile information contained within or pointed at by the device. None of the devices in the prior art are designed or enabled to take advantage of an existing network such as the Internet. Neither are they designed to interact with an individual based on the individual's personal profile or with an environment based on a profile of the environment or to interact with other devices in such a system. The devices are also not designed to leverage the capabilities of networked resources with the intent of reducing the cost and increasing the durability of the device while enhancing the capability.
A system made according to the present invention is composed of devices that enhance user enjoyment by enabling a means for interactive devices to respond to their surroundings, the surroundings to respond to the interactive devices and for allowing the interactive devices to respond to one or more users. For the purposes of the present invention, a user shall include any operator or owner of the device with an emphasized relationship. For example, besides human beings, “user/owner's” of a device may be schools, towns, businesses, museums, organizations or other non-human entity.
A system made according to the present invention also provides a unique identity to the device and allows the device access to the unique identity (in the form of a profile) of the user or users. This system improves the ratio of the cost to capability of any device participating in the system, by reducing or eliminating hardware redundancy within the system. Wherever a capability exists, all other devices participating in the system can leverage its benefit for their own function.